I Hate Breakfast

I don't know about you, but it annoys the hell out of me that
someone else gets to decide that I can't have a cheeseburger and fries
before eleven in the morning.
I hate breakfast and always have. Confronting eggs before noon --
fried, poached, or otherwise -- makes me bilious. Pancakes and
waffles are worse. The one thing bacon is good for is sticking between
lettuce and tomatoes in a sandwich (slathered with Miracle Whip --
mayonnaise isn't the same at all) you'd choose for that vastly more
civilized meal, lunch. And to paraphrase Apocalypse Now, the smell
of maple syrup in the morning reminds me of ... napalm.
In my youth, I never ate breakfast. I was a night-person forced
to suffer government indoctrination at daybreak. Eating anything
under such conditions induced nausea; I was content to wait for lunch.
I still rise early to get Cathy off to work before resuming labor on
the current novel. I'm also a Type II diabetic who takes pills that
make it absolutely necessary that I eat something. Still, the only
thing the pimpled dimbulbs out along the fast food strip will sell me
is exactly the kind of glop I've spent an entire lifetime avoiding.
For over a century, corporations like Kellogg, Post, and a dozen
others have spent quintillions of advertising dollars in a
horrifyingly successful attempt to persuade mothers that the cattle
feed they manufacture is suitable to foist off on helpless children
before they're wide awake enough to defend themselves.
It's enlightening to learn the history of these companies.
Vegetarians today believe that consuming animal flesh spawns an urge
to violence in the human psyche. (Keep in mind what I said about
vegetarians in Pallas: you are what you eat.) A century ago, the
overriding preoccupation was sexuality, especially what was politely
referred to way back then as "self-abuse". (This was later defined in
the 60s as "doing your own thing".) Kellogg and others claimed that
laying off sirloins and stuffing yourself with hormone-absorbing
cereal products closely resembling wood shavings would somehow prevent
impure thoughts.
(For a hilarious examination of this topic, The Road to
Wellville is a movie demonstrating that the goofiest garbage our
grandmothers thought up -- mine got undressed in her bedroom closet,
even when she was alone in the house -- are not too goofy for the
hairsprayed heads of TV to attempt to convince us of today. Guess it
proves you can hide as many bees in a bouffant as in a bonnet.)
Cereal magnates of the late 19th and early 20th centuries believed
a lot of other goofy things, as well -- in particular, in various
trendy forms of socialism, which they gleefully advocated and
subsidized in a variety of manners.
Which brings us at long last, I think, to some kind of point.
Today's captains of the fast food industry are no more contented
simply to make billions of bucks than their corn-flakey predecessors
were. They gotta be socially conscious. They gotta fry potatoes up
in some tasteless petroleum byproduct instead of delicious, natural
lard. What's worse, they gotta shovel mountains of mazuma over to
those very social and political causes most grimly dedicated to
reducing us -- the ultimate source of all their largesse, already
forced to pay for too much of this nonsense through taxation -- under
absolute despotism.
There are entire countries with gross national products smaller
than the amounts that the founders of McDonald's have bestowed upon
Democratic Party grabbies who routinely confiscate half of my income,
have spent half their lifetimes (and mine) trying to confiscate my
means of self-defense, and who would even take away my right to choose
my own doctor. They support criminals who want to kill me or make my
life so miserable that I'll kill myself. Small wonder, then, they
also feel entitled to decide for me what I should eat for breakfast.
I suppose it's possible that the fast food empires have never
looked at things in quite this way before. (People say that a lot
about what I write.) What's more, if they feel right about offering me
a rubber egg on a pasteboard muffin instead of what I really want, why
shouldn't I tell them what to do? And so, on the very remote chance
that they may be interested in making up for their malfeasances,
misfeasances, nonfeasances, upfeasances, downfeasances, sidefeasances,
or whatever other feasances they may be guilty of, I have a few
suggestions.
Remember that, as a corporation, in the act of seeking special
privileges and immunities unavailable to mere individuals, you've made
yourself nothing, more or less, than a branch of government. The
Constitution (especially its first ten amendments) was written as an
absolute limit on government activity. Be aware that there is an
increasingly popular idea in this country today that corporations (as
branches of government) should be limited in exactly the same way.
Ask your legal department what that would cost.
Back before Disney Corp got taken over by the AntiWalt, they
reminded us, now and again, of what this country's all about. Way
back then, militias were politically correct; they did a nifty series
on the Sons of Liberty. They did a swell mouse cartoon about the
Revolution and the Declaration of Independence called Ben and Me.
They did a great movie about an 18th century British tax resistor (and
the Navigation Acts that sparked our own revolution) called The
Scarecrow.
Forget 101 Dalmations, forget The Hunchback of Notre Dame,
forget The Lion King and the sick, sappy substitute for philosophy
that permeates all of them. Forget animal rights -- animals are for
breakfast. Let's have a slick, appealing promotion based on the Bill
of Rights. (And before you offer up all the usual suit-excuses, you'd
better understand that we know that you know that it's only boring
if you try to make it safe; I'm sure we'll agree wholeheartedly that
the Second Amendment isn't safe -- it wasn't meant to be -- and the
First Amendment is even dangerouser.) Relax, you don't have to do
anything Republican. Hell, you can be even trendier than Left, you
can be Libertarian. Try repairing the civilization you've worked so hard and spent so
much to wreck.
And while you're at it, fry me a goddamn cheeseburger!

In L. Neil Smith's Prometheus Award-winning Pallas, socialist "East
America" and individualists from West America's "Jackelope Republic"
battle for possession of the second largest of the asteroids. Action,
romance, comedy, tragedy, RKBA, metallic silhouette shooting! Buy it
at bookstores anywhere, or call Laissez Faire Books at 1-800-326-0996.
Also, see "The Webley Page" at www.lneilsmith.org//

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Enterprise, Number 21, February 2, 1997.